


The weight of the world on your shoulders

by ckret2



Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [22]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Ghidrama, Internal Conflict, Internal Monologue, M/M, does it count as internal conflict if it's actually 3 people but they share 1 brainspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: One of them was infatuated with Rodan; one of them was neutral; and one was enraged at the very thought. That had been enough for Ghidorah to decide to stay on Earth on a trial basis—but more than a month had passed and the trial was over. It was time for them to make a final decision.Were they staying, or not?
Relationships: King Ghidorah/Rodan
Series: Red Sprite & the Golden Ones (Rodorah slowburn oneshots) [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1476800
Comments: 21
Kudos: 101





	The weight of the world on your shoulders

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted Sept 29. This is part of an ongoing series of Rodorah one-shots. If you don’t wanna read the others, all you need to know is Rodan recently made a globe out of lava and gave it to Ghidorah (sorta), and Ghidorah’s having _some feelings_ over it.
> 
> I wasn’t planning on writing this but the idea came to me while I was proofing Now What? and I went, hm. I should revisit that, huh. Also I wanted to post _something_ while I was work on an enormous five-parter—that'll be coming up here soon.

They curled on the ground around the red sprite's gift to them—a painstakingly accurate globe of this world, made out of volcanic stone and silica glass that _he'd made himself_ —and looked up at it in the dark. They were supposed to be asleep.

They weren't.

The very structure of their life did not allow for a single possession. They carried nothing that wasn't contained within their own body, hidden beneath their electrical scales. They arrived alone and naked, they destroyed everything, they departed alone and naked.

They had known that choosing to keep the red sprite would change that. That they would now have one possession. That they would have to learn how to live differently in order to accommodate the fact that there was something that they meant to keep.

They hadn't expected to receive a second possession. Especially not so fast.

A globe.

It felt heavy.

It felt burdensome. It felt like something pressing down on their back just below where their necks joined, in the narrow channel between Third and Second's spines, right between their shoulders. It felt like it would weigh them down so heavily they wouldn't be able to fly.

It felt like it could crush them to death.

They draped a wing over the globe, rolled it closer, and wrapped around it tighter.

So: now what? They had asked themselves that when they'd made the choice to keep him, and on some level had never stopped asking it. Now what? Were they going to just start accumulating possessions? Things and stuff and people they had to think about, worry about, protect, maintain? Things and stuff and people they had to let weigh on their mind the way a black hole settled heavily on the fabric of the universe, stretching it threadbare with its mass? Settle down, claim _territory_ , have _borders_ , learn how to keep breathing through the claustrophobia as the sky closed in on them?

Had they made their decision?

Because there was a decision pending, wasn't there?

When they'd chosen to stay, it had been a temporary measure: _we'll see. We'll decide later_. Because they'd been torn on the subject, two voting one way and one the other, and a 2/3rds majority was unacceptable to them. They all shared a body and all shared their minds; they couldn't tolerate doing something that was one-third intolerable to themselves. All decisions had to be unanimous. Even if that meant haranguing the one in the minority into changing his mind. Even if that meant that the two in the majority had to change their position because the one would not budge.

They'd been here well over a month. They had to come to an agreement. Was this going to be their life now?

As much as First hated being in love—it was like having a crossbow strapped to their chest with an arrow pointed at their heart, ready to go off at any moment—he _was_ in love. And every time he'd thought they were on the verge of losing the red sprite—because they'd touched his mind and found no love for them inside it, because they'd seen him plummeting from the sky with cracked armor and frozen wings—he'd felt that arrow threatening to pierce their chest. Actually losing him, he was sure, would be more painful than anything he'd felt since they'd escaped their masters. He knew that made him stupid. He knew that made him weak. He knew that made him vulnerable. He knew that made him hypocritical. But knowing that the crossbow shouldn't be there didn't remove it. Perhaps it was selfish for him to ask them _all_ to stay to avoid _his_ pain; but when he had no power to prevent that pain from spilling over to the other two, he couldn't separate his self-interest from their collective interest. And so, embarrassed and ashamed, he voted for them all to stay. First said yes.

Third didn't love the red sprite, although he thought he would come to, in the same way that they all came to adopt each other's most passionate opinions and emotions. He did _like_ the red sprite. Most importantly, though, he liked _being with_ the red sprite. He liked being grounded. He liked being grounded, dammit! He liked having a world with colors and gravity and weather and skies! So did the others, even if they didn't want to admit it. When they were in space they ached to reach the next world. No one was pushing them off the planets they landed on. No one made them spend ninety nine percent of their lives in space but themselves. So why did they always leave worlds as fast as they could? Staying with the red sprite was an excuse to live the alternative, and they could _all_ see they were better off this way. Being on this world was a mercy, deliverance from the cycle of voids and nights and asteroids and hibernation and cold that made up nearly all of their life. Being on this world felt like a chance to finally go sane. Third said yes.

Second heard Third's perspective. While he thought they should be cautious to not get attached to this particular world—crummy little world covered in machine makers and patrolled by the little king—in deference to Third's experiment, he was willing to consider the merits of allowing themselves to become attached to worlds, in general. They could stay on this world for a while to see what it was like. After all, individual planets might come and go; but planets _in and of themselves_ were never going to vanish, were they? Besides—hadn't they always refused to have possessions because losing a possession would lead to suffering, and they in their immortality couldn't afford the compounded suffering of loss after loss after loss? If First was already so attached to the red sprite, then leaving now would simply cause the very suffering they would otherwise have left to avoid. It was too late. The attachment was made. They would be harming themselves if they left. Therefore, they had to stay—for now. If their feelings for the red sprite cooled, they could leave while it wouldn't hurt. And so his vote was conditional: _for now_ , he thought they should stay. As long as leaving would do more harm than staying. But he wanted them to occasionally reconsider the decision and debate it over again to see if anything had changed. If they were trapped on this world by a weight on their shoulders too heavy to shake off, so be it; but he refused to be trapped by mere inertia. Second said yes—conditionally.

So they would stay. They'd keep doing what they'd been doing: exploring this world an inch at a time. They'd learn the red sprite's language, fight him when the mood struck, and edge ever close to winning his affections. They'd avoid conflict with the little king when they could and try to kill him when they couldn't. They'd toe the line with the local species of machine makers so long as they posed a potential threat to the red sprite, and eliminate them if an opportunity arose. They'd learn new songs from the creatures around them—emotions they rarely had a chance to sing when they were focused only on extermination—and they'd write their own songs.

It didn't sound so bad.

They'd get bored eventually; but they were always bored, anyway. It wouldn’t be so bad.

At the conclusion of the discussion, relief washed through two thirds of them: Third, because he had been terrified that Second would fight to rip them off this planet; First, because he had been terrified that in voting to stay, he would be dooming them to languish on this rock for the rest of their life. If Second was relieved, he wasn't showing it; as usual his emotions were closed up.

A weight lifted off their shoulders.

They shifted their position, in the process accidentally turning the globe; glass instead of rock now pressed to their abdomen. However, they refused to get attached to this thing. It wasn't even alive. Its worth came from its connection to the red sprite, nothing else. For now they could keep it as a trinket that reminded them favorably of him; and if they ever got so attached to it they felt like they couldn't part with it, they could eat it.

They shut their eyes and tried to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/188037644932/the-weight-of-the-world-on-your-shoulders). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


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